Methods
The evaluation was limited to CRC Full Awards
granted in CBCRP award cycles IV–V (1998–1999) to
capture information from completed grants only.
Interviews were conducted with both academic and
community principal investigators of these awards.
To determine the impact on the community of
participating in Community-based Participatory Research, the
executive director or board president of the community organization
was interviewed if the community principal investigator was no longer
with the agency. If more than two people were identified in the grant
report as co-principal investigators, they were all interviewed.
Seven research teams were included in this evaluation. At least
one person representing the community organization and one academic
researcher were interviewed for each project. Twelve of thirteen
eligible individuals representing the community organizations were
interviewed and all nine eligible academic researchers were
interviewed. Teams were randomly assigned a team label, A through
G, to protect confidentiality. A list of the seven projects, with the
names and affiliations of the community and academic co-principal
investigators, is provided in Appendix C.
Consent to participate in the study was obtained from all participants
prior to conducting the study through a mailed letter and consent
form, and again at the beginning of the interviews.
An interview protocol was developed from previous interviews used
for other evaluation studies and from a literature review on
Community-based Participatory Research. The interview questions
were pilot tested and minor changes were made before
implementation.
A trained interviewer conducted standardized open-ended interviews over the telephone with each of the eligible individuals. Each interview was taped and transcribed by an outside service. Both the interviewer and the evaluator compared the audio interview with the transcription to ensure accurate transcription. The evaluator analyzed text from the transcripts using a computer-assisted qualitative analysis program.
The evaluator developed a classification system to assign scores to each of the expected outcomes described below in Table 1. The scores ranged from 0, which reflected lack of successful outcomes, to a 1, 2, or 3 reflecting greater degrees of successful outcomes. For example, one valuable outcome of any research project is the number of publications that result. In this evaluation, teams that had a greater number of publications were awarded more points then teams with fewer publications. Total scores are reported in Figure 1, page 21.
